


burn, burn, brightly burn

by sinivalkoista



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Finds Out About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Blind Character, Blind Merlin (Merlin), Burns, FebuWhump2021, Graphic Description, Gwaine Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Hurt, Hurt Merlin (Merlin), Merlin Needs a Hug (Merlin), Merlin's Magic Revealed (Merlin), Protective Gwaine (Merlin), Protective Knights (Merlin), Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29750700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinivalkoista/pseuds/sinivalkoista
Summary: When Merlin is injured on a mission, Arthur has to face the fact that Merlin is a sorcerer - and that he might not survive....Febuwhump prompts "don't look," torture, burned, and "I can't see."
Relationships: Knights of the Round Table & Merlin (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	1. before your eyes, i brightly burn

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Wind in the Trees](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822888) by [A_Farnese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Farnese/pseuds/A_Farnese). 



> I decided to combine these prompts.

Arthur woke to a blinding headache and a bitter taste in his mouth.

Groaning, he cracked open his eyes and tried to sort out the world as it poured into his senses.

Light and dark.

Other sounds of displeasure.

The ground underneath him.

“Merlin?” he croaked. 

Normally, when he was knocked out, Merlin was hovering over him like a worried mother hen as he awoke, telling him what had happened and assuring him that everything was now fine thanks to something he didn’t remember doing.

Merlin did not appear.

Alarm bells went off in his head.

He struggled to a seated position and discovered in the process that his hands were bound together with a thick rope.

“Oh, ruddy-” What other profanities Gwaine was going to say from across whatever room they were in were cut off by a grunt.

Arthur’s memories were slowly trickling back to him. He remembered a feast, good wine and food, and laughter.

So much laughter until his sides hurt.

He remembered seeing Merlin happy for the first time since Lancelot’s death, smiling broadly from ear to ear as he joked with Gwaine, no doubt at Arthur’s expense.

He remembered scowling at them, but not too harshly because it was harder and harder to keep his eyelids open, then his head from drooping, and then-

Oh, goodness.

Arthur swore.

“Is anyone untied?” he asked, raising his voice to break into the exclamations of disgust as the other knights discovered that they had been bound.

“No.”

“Not a blasted chance.”

“How long do you think they had been planning this, huh?

Arthur frowned. One obnoxious and opinionated voice was absent from the “roll call.” 

“Is Merlin awake yet?” As his eyes adjusted to the half-dark, half-hazy atmosphere of whatever shed or barn they had been thrown in, he scanned the bodies he could see. “Where’s Merlin?”

“I don’t see him,” Leon admitted softly. “Elyan, is he by you?”

“That’s Percival. He looks nothing like Merlin.”

Arthur’s blood ran cold. The only reason he could think that their captors would separate Merlin from the rest of them was horrible - they were going to harm or torture him, perhaps to squeeze information out of him.

That would never happen. Merlin was as stubborn as an ox. He would die before he gave anything up.

Arthur could not let that happen.

Without the help of his hands, Arthur struggled to his feet and nearly toppled over as his body tried to reconcile the action. “We have to get out of here. Is anyone carrying a knife?”

Although he didn’t think their captors would be as foolish as to leave any of them with a weapon after cleverly luring them there, stranger things had happened before.

“No,” Leon answered for all of them.

In his head, Arthur swore again.

Using his shoulder to clear some of the sawdust out of his eye, Arthur inspected the small shed they were in.

In the dust were indentations from their own bodies and crates that had been moved somewhere else before their arrival. In the corner were a pile of tools - a shovel, a spindly rake, and a hoe that was chipped in one corner.

“The hoe,” he barked as he tested the ropes about his wrists. 

Awkwardly, Elyan grabbed it and nearly thwacked Gwaine in the head as he tried to position it well enough that they could use it to remove their bonds.

Whoever had trussed them up was an excellent tier of knots. Although Arthur strained against the rope, it barely budged.

“It isn’t sharpened,” Gwaine fumed as he moved his hands back and forth on opposite sides of the head. “Who keeps a ruddy unsharpened hoe?”

“Keep trying,” Arthur snapped, moving over to a crack in the shed’s wall. Noises from the village were increasing - shouts, hollers, catcalls. They raised the hair on the back of his neck and set an uneasy feeling in his gut. The light filtering in from the crack and other holes in the wall was faded slightly as though the sun were going down.

They had been unconscious for nearly a whole day.

“Blast it,” he swore, whirling back around. “Move. Let me try.”

Gwaine stepped to the side, and Arthur took his place. As he attempted to remove the rope from his wrists, Percival awkwardly picked up the rake and attempted to insert the prongs between the stout door and the wall. When he pushed it in one direction, one of the prongs broke.

All of the tools were in similar disrepair, but Leon handed him the shovel to try next.

The ropes were sawed about halfway through, but for Arthur, it wasn’t quick enough. As he worked for the next five minutes, he shot furtive glances to see if Percival had any luck.

While his head was turned, the ropes snapped, and Gwaine took his place again.

“They put a blasted good lock on the door,” Percival said, his voice tinged with anger. “Can’t break it. Or the wood.”

“Well, keep trying,” Arthur snapped. “It’s just  _ wood.”  _

“‘Just wood’ is a whole lot harder to break through than you think,” Percival retorted, barely controlling his tone.

“Hey,” Leon piped up. “That’s not going to help us get out of here.”

Gwaine was free.

The cries from the village were growing in volume. Since they came from one side of the shed more than the other, Arthur assumed that they were on the outskirts of the town.

Percival rammed the shovel into the crack between the door and its frame.

Because his wrists were still tied together, however, the movement barely put a dent in the wood.

“Give it to me,” Arthur ordered. “My hands are free.”

Percival handed him the shovel, and he rammed it into the same spot, sending a few shards of wood flying.

The light was quickly fleeing from the small “room.” Now, the sound of music was rising into the air, mixing with the caterwauling.

It sounded eerie, grating, like a rusty lock begging for oil.

Arthur felt cold.

He threw more muscle into the repetitive movement.

Elyan joined him with the hoe. The door was starting to weaken the smallest bit, but Arthur felt they were making far too little progress far too slowly.

“Come on,” he grunted.

The light was almost completely gone, and the knights were turning into shadows.

Arthur was afraid for Merlin.

He did not know  _ how,  _ but it was unquestionable in his mind that something bad, something  _ awful  _ was going to happen to Merlin if they did not escape from that building.

Arthur strained against the handle of the shovel, which threatened to snap under his weight until Elyan added the hoe to it.

With a crash, the section of the door below the lock splintered.

“We’ve got to get to him,” Arthur huffed.

Leon crouched down and pulled at a loose section of the wood with his hands. “Gah!” He rocked back on his heels. “It’s no use. We can’t make a hole big enough.”

“No. Keep trying.” It  _ was  _ possible. That was the only way out.

“Look at my hands, Arthur.”

It was then that Arthur realized a bit of light was returning to their enclosure in a soft yellow glow.

“They’re bleeding,” Leon continued. “I only removed a small part. We can’t even fit our bodies through the hole we created.”

“But-”

“We’ve got to try!” Gwaine insisted. “Merlin’s life could be at stake. I’ve seen men-”

“Hold on.” Percival held up a hand, cocking his head to the side. “Do you hear something?”

A monstrosity - something akin to a pegan ritual along with crackling and snapping from an unknown source.

Below it all, pattering.

Pushing Leon to the side slightly, Arthur bent down and peered out of the hole.

A younger girl he didn’t recognize was running towards them, her hair flying and her face flushed. “Help!” she cried, skidding to a stop in front of the door where Arthur could only see her boots.

“What’s going on?” Arthur demanded.

Something scraped. A heavy thud as the lock dropped from the door.

With a jerk, the stubborn door opened, and the girl was there.

Tears were tracking down her face. “Help,” she cried, “you have to help him. They’re going to kill him.”

Arthur pushed past her.

In the middle of the village, above the tops of the buildings, fire climbed into the sky, licking at the air and crackling.

Arthur ran.

…

It was a scene that would be etched in Arthur’s mind for many years to come.

Whenever he closed his eyes at night, he would see and hear the moment in perfect clarity:

Him, pushing through the sweaty bodies stuck close together and elbowing his way to get to the front.

The haze of smoke and the colors of the villagers’ clothes.

The reedy music, twisting and winding through the air as they celebrated in an almost macabre dance.

The yelling, the eerie calls, the shouts of delight from the villagers as they watched the spectacle of their own making.

The fire.

Oh,  _ goodness,  _ the fire.

A massive blaze that rose twice as tall as any man with flames that licked at the sky, smoke billowing upwards and pluming out, adding to the confusion hanging in the air.

And in the fire?

Merlin.

Behind him, he heard the agonized shouts of the other knights, but he could not move. He was frozen, staring at the body being consumed by the flames.

He heard a strangled cry that might have come from his own lips, but he felt as though he were watching the scene from somewhere outside his own body.

Above the smell of the smoke and people, the stench of burning flesh

Merlin.

_ Merlin, Merlin, Merlin.  _

“ _ Merlin!”  _

The figure shifted.

Arthur was not sure what he was seeing or feeling. His heart was numb and broken at the same time because there was  _ nothing  _ he could do with flames so high-

A scream.

A long, guttural sound that tore through Arthur’s ears.

Wails rose up around Arthur.

He was starting forward to attempt  _ anything  _ to rescue Merlin when-

In a flash of blue, the world exploded.

A shockwave flung Arthur backwards.

…

He was lying on the ground, the breath stolen from his body, looking up at the stars that were beginning to poke their way through the smoke. His mind was stunned. When he blinked his eyes, the view of the nightly heavens was obscured by flames.

He rolled over onto his stomach and used his hands to push himself to a half-kneeling position. While his head spun, he retched.

Once his stomach was empty and the pale liquid had stopped dribbling from his mouth, he heaved himself to his feet.

Bodies were scattered on the ground amongst the remains of food, broken instruments, and torches.

Arthur wasn’t sure if they were dead or alive, but he didn’t dwell on it - his gaze was drawn to the center of the circle of destruction where the remains of a pyre smoldered.

In the light of the remaining upright torches, Arthur saw Gwaine kneeling over a figure with Leon, Perceval, and Elyan.

“Merlin!” He took a step forwards and nearly lost his balance as the world spun and his foot came into contact with someone's leg.

Leon stood. “Stay there, sire. Don’t look.”

Arthur frowned.

If they didn’t want him coming…

His eyes widened. “No. No, he can’t be dead. No!” Ignoring Leon’s warning, he stumbled forward until he was upon them.

Cradled in Gwaine’s arms was Merlin.

What could be left of Merlin underneath blackened, oozing, and burnt red skin.

As bile rose in his throat again, Arthur gagged.

This couldn’t be happening.

This was  _ Merlin.  _ Merlin wasn’t supposed to get in trouble. Merlin was supposed to run away.  _ He  _ was supposed to  _ ensure  _ Merlin remained out of danger.

And now…

Turning away, Percival let out a guttural shout of rage.

Gwaine was openly crying, and Arthur felt…

Numb.

So empty and numb.

…

Arthur wanted to kill them all.

He wanted to burn them until they were nothing but pockets of ashes and broken bones.

He wanted to  _ punish  _ them for taking Merlin away from him - away from  _ all  _ of them.

It was Leon that dragged him away. “Merlin wouldn’t want you to. We’ll deal with them later.”

“Don’t you mean Merlin wouldn’t  _ have wanted  _ me to?” Arthur asked him bitterly.

Leon didn’t answer.

…

Arthur had never thought about Merlin dying before.

Every once in a while, the concept of his own death had crossed his mind before, but he had never lingered on the notion too long. Death was beyond him, in a way, when the luxuries of youth were laid out before him.

But Merlin?

Goodness, Arthur had never considered  _ Merlin’s  _ death.

They’d given Lancelot a knight’s funeral with the highest honor, but Arthur couldn't do that to Merlin. It didn’t seem right to burn what was…

_ What’s left of him,  _ his mind supplied. 

They would bury him.

It pained Arthur that it wouldn’t be on Camelot’s soil, but there wasn’t much else they could do. They needed to move on, to call for more of Camelot's troops to subdue the village before they realized the people they tried to kill were escaping.

It wasn’t right.

…

Gwaine refused to give up Merlin’s body, glaring at them as though they were grave robbers instead of friends.

“What are you going to do to him?” he asked harshly.

“Bury him, Gwaine,” Percival. “What else?”

“You saw what I did, before he knocked us all out. Are you going to deny it?”

Arthur’s mind was too busy processing the fact that Merlin was  _ dead  _ on a steady loop to focus on the other part -  _ magic.  _

He didn’t  _ want  _ to think about that part of it all. He’d heard the phrase  _ speak ill of the dead  _ before, and nothing fit  _ now  _ better than that.

“Forget about it,” he said, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. His eyes were burning with acrid tears that he refused to actually let fall. “Just...forget about it.”

Above five feet away from them the others had dug a hole in the ground the size of a body.

Merlin’s body.

Leon, Percival, and Elyan were standing solemnly in a subconscious line, waiting.

Waiting for Arthur and Gwaine to say goodbye.

None of them were going to acknowledge it - the magic. They seemed to have an unspoken rule that the secret was to go to the grave with Merlin.

After a wordless understanding, Gwaine released Merlin’s body to Arthur.

A blanket was wrapped around the form, but Arthur felt sick to his stomach.

There were ten steps from where they were standing to the grave.

Ten steps. An eternity.

Arthur was hollow.

He barely felt his feet hitting the ground as he made those ten steps, stopping in front of the absence of earth.

The world around him was fuzzy.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

…

He wasn’t quite sure he first heard it.

He thought the sound came from the back of his throat in his horrible attempt to keep himself from openly weeping over the body of his dead manservant.

Then, he realized that it wasn’t from him.

It wasn’t from behind him, either.

It was from the pathetic bundle in his arms.

“Gwaine, grab your canteen,” he snapped, hurriedly setting Merlin down on the grass on the spot between his boots and the grave.

He didn’t need to turn around to know that Gwaine was openly gaping at him.

“Hurry!”

The blanket was wrapped tightly - Arthur had to be careful not to do anything that would majorly hurt.

As if Merlin wasn’t in agony if-

Oh,  _ goodness, if- _

“Arthur, what’s wrong?” Leon barked. “What’s going on?”

A few seconds later, Gwaine came running back with the canteen.

Arthur wasn’t sure what he was going to do with water, but he was sure that they were going to need it because-

-because Arthur got rid of the blanket, and Merlin groaned again, almost a keening sound in the back of his throat.

His father would be ashamed of him if he saw Arthur, but Uther wasn’t around to dish out any of his pleasure. Freely, Arthur cried.

“Merlin,  _ fie-”  _

Behind him, Leon swore.

…

It was like moving through a dream.

There was a debate of whether or not Merlin would survive a harried horseback trip to Camelot.

(The answer was  _ no.  _ Merlin might have been alive, but he was almost dead. Arthur prayed they wouldn’t have to use the grave, after all.)

In the end, Leon hopped on the fastest horse they could find to inform Uther of the insurgents as soon as possible, and the rest of them moved as far away from the village as they could with Merlin’s bad condition.

It killed Arthur, not knowing how to help Merlin or if anything he tried would just make it worse.

(The dark part of his mind wondered if Merlin had been saved from the fire only to die in a more painful manner.)

…

It was magic.

In the middle of his, Gwaine, and Percival’s discussion on how to treat Merlin’s injuries, Gwaine broke off a sentence to utter an expletive and pointed.

Arthur whipped around.

While they had been speaking, a glow had enveloped Merlin’s body.

Arthur didn’t know whether to be terrified or angry or-

What, for the love of the green earth, was he supposed to  _ do?  _

When things were bad, Merlin always knew the best course of action even when Arthur couldn’t see it  _ or  _ admit it.

Now?

Now, Arthur was left wondering what the best course of action about  _ Merlin  _ was.

Merlin wasn’t supposed to  _ be  _ a sorcerer.

Merlin wasn’t supposed to be hiding things.

Merlin wasn’t supposed to be lying on the ground, almost burned to a crisp, enveloped in blue tendrils of some sort of magic.

When Percival asked, “Are you all right, sire?” as they all sat in some sort of weird, twisted circle around Merlin as the night fell upon them, he laughed.

“Am  _ I  _ all right?” he echoed bitterly.

Percival dropped it.

…

Unsure if interfering would do more harm or more good, they stayed away from the magic and Merlin.

Every once in a while, Percival, Elyan, and Gwaine exchanged a few words, but they were otherwise silent.

They left Arthur alone, giving him space.

Arthur sat, his head propped up by his hands, and thought.

…

It was the middle of the night when Arthur first heard the cough.

He hadn’t fallen asleep in the first place, so he bolted to his feet. “Merlin?”

“Art’ur.”

Merlin’s voice was rough and hoarse from smoke inhalation. It sounded like the voice of a dead man that had pulled himself up from the lip of the sepulcher.

Since the others were sleeping, Arthur crouched down by him. “Merlin, can you hear me? Do you need anything?”

“Why’s…” Merlin almost seemed to forget he was talking. “Dark?”

Arthur could barely make out Merlin’s features in the dark (and what he remembered wasn’t good), so he couldn’t detect if Merlin was joking. “Because it’s night, you idiot,” he said, his voice thicker than he intended.

Merlin didn’t answer.

Arthur breathed out.

It would be all right. 

Never before in his life had Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, been more grateful for magic.

…

None of them slept much.


	2. Chapter 2

The bits of Merlin’s mind that were Merlin slowly came back to him, like a fog dissipating. 

Although he couldn’t really move, he found his magic working, moving around him like the coils of a snake.

It was knitting him back together as though he were threads that had unraveled from a greater project. His skin itched and burned and pulled as it worked, and he gasped in pain.

None of it seemed real. He felt as though he were floating through a bed of pain, and he wanted it to stop.

His magic kept him from slipping away. Like it had when Nimueh’s fireball had hit him in the chest, it fought to keep him breathing and living even though the rest of his body told him that it would just be better to let go.

His eyes wouldn’t open just yet, but he could smell burnt skin.

Briefly, he wondered if it was his own. 

It had to be his own, he thought, because he didn’t remember anyone else burning or other screams.

He would have remembered those.

It was disgusting, but he didn’t have the energy to wrinkle his nose, let alone plug it. He wondered if that was because of the fire or if the drugs they had hidden in his meal were still lurking in his system.

His magic was melding him together again. He felt as though a thin layer of something were being stretched across him. It felt unnatural, stranger than the magic itself.

He wanted it to stop.

A small bit of him almost wanted to die.

That would be better, wouldn’t it? 

Through the hazy fog that was cluttering up his mind, Merlin tried to remember something that would answer that question for him. Something he saw, perhaps?

But it slipped away in the next instance.

…

He was speaking with someone, asking a question that received a reply that was of little consequence to him.

He felt charred.

It was better to sleep, where none of that existed, so he drifted off again.

…

Thanks to his magic, the world was a little clearer when he awoke for the second time.

For a while, he simply breathed in and out, focusing on the action.

It was rough. It felt like dirt or soot or thick sand were clogging his windpipes, and it forced a cough out of him that sent spirals of pain through his chest.

“Merlin?”

Someone was hovering over him. Merlin could feel the looming presence.

“Merlin, breathe.”

That person helped him sit up, but that didn’t ease the passage of air into his system.

For several minutes, he concentrated on wheezing. 

His face was on fire. Every particle of skin  _ burned  _ as though he were still stuck within the flames, and he would have bit his lip to keep himself from crying out if not for the need of air.

Gaius wasn’t there. If he had been, he would have been shoving stuff in Merlin’s hands and telling him to drink.

“Hurts,” he finally managed to whimper. “It hurts.”

His voice sounded like gravel. 

“I imagine it does,” the person confirmed.

“Arthur?” he asked. 

Fie, how could he have forgotten? He was supposed to protect Arthur. What if something had happened to him?

“I am here.”

Oh. Arthur was there.

He relaxed a little, but the throbbing in his eyes intensified.

“Face,” Merlin gasped. He didn’t want to even try to open his eyes, but he needed to if he was going to protect Arthur. The villagers-

Even though it pulled his skin the wrong way, Merlin reached up to kneed his knuckles into his eyes. His hands felt like charred wood, brittle and crusty, as though the skin had been pasted back on.

“Merlin, stop that.” Gently, Arthur grabbed his hands. “You’re going to...aggravate...things.”

Something in Arthur’s voice was off. His tone was cold, as though he had been injured or was upset about something.

Fear shot through Merlin.

Arthur didn’t know, did he?

Had the villagers told him what they had seen Merlin do before the feast?

No, they couldn’t have. He had been laughing, smiling, before-

“Breathe, Merlin.”

Arthur sounded  _ awkward.  _

Although Merlin tried to open his eyes to ascertain what was bothering him, his body rebelled against him.

Arthur wasn’t supporting him anymore. He was lying on his back, but it was strangely softer than his normal bed back in Camelot.

“Danger,” he rasped. “The villagers-”

“It’s all being taken care of, Merlin,” Arthur told him, his voice as icy as iron. “You should rest.”

Although Merlin wanted to protest, he had no say in the matter.

At least when he was sleeping, it didn’t hurt so badly.

…

Arthur punched the nearest tree.

The tree did more damage to him than he did to it, but he reared back his fist to let the bark have another one.

Someone grabbed his fist.

“That’s not going to do any good.”

Arthur shrugged Gwaine off. “Leave me alone, Gwaine. Shouldn’t you be helping the others set up camp?”

“Maybe.” Gwaine eyed him. “But I thought I would help keep the prince from turning his knuckles into pulverized meat.”

Arthur didn’t know how to respond to that civilly. “That’s none of your business. Leave me alone.”

“Listen…”

Facing the tree, Arthur halted, waiting for Gwaine to speak, but the usually jovial knight seemed to have forgotten how to use his words.

Arthur couldn’t take the silence. “I never thought that I would have to deal with Merlin like this. I can’t let him burn. Not again.”

Fie, not again.

Maybe if it had been another person, someone less removed from him, he would have been able to return to Camelot and condemn the sorcerer to the pyre.

But Merlin-

Arthur  _ would  _ not,  _ could  _ not go through that again.

“He isn’t going to burn. I’ve decided not to tell my father.”

Merlin wasn’t evil. Arthur could not reconcile the  _ stupid  _ loyalty of his manservant with an evil sorcerer.

How many times had Merlin jumped in front of the sword, drunk the poison, volunteered himself just to save Arthur’s hide?

Those were not the actions of someone who wanted to see him dead, who wanted to see Camelot crumble, who wanted to see the world crushed.

Audibly, Gwaine sighed in relief. “Elyan said he is probably going to live, thanks to…” Despite his loyalty to Merlin, he seemed reluctant to even voice the words.

“Yes.” Arthur had been with him when he had woken a second time. “Have you-” Body facing the tree, Arthur paused for a moment. “Have you...seen him? Seen his eyes?”

“No.” Gwaine seemed puzzled. “I didn’t see any gold-”

“No,” Arthur cut him off. “Not that.”

Goodness, Arthur didn’t know how to explain it. Although Gwaine had tried to insist on helping them evaluate Merlin once the magic was done, he was not the most experienced, and the job had fallen to Elyan and Arthur.

“His eyes-” Arthur tried to start again, but it was so hard to push the words out of his throat. “They’re…”

“What?”

“They’re  _ gone,”  _ Arthur snapped.

“ _ What?”  _

Arthur turned around. “He didn’t realize it, but the fire and the magic must have done something to them.”

It was another thing Arthur would never forget - the emptiness, the blackness, the red and crispy flesh-

Gwaine clenched a fist, and he turned away from Arthur this time. “I need a drink,” he croaked. “Fie,  _ Merlin-”  _

His eyes.

Back to the turn, Arthur sunk to the ground as Gwaine took a few steps away from him. He rested his head in his hands.

Gwaine said something - angrily, probably not directed at him, but Arthur couldn’t distinguish the words through the blood pounding through his head and the anger boiling in his own stomach.

Three days ago, everything had been fine.

The world had been right. He had laughed and joked with Merlin and trained with the knights. Merlin had been plain, healthy Merlin with no magic but a grin that could evoke a faint smile from even the coldest of hearts.

And now?

Now, Merlin was going to wake up, and Arthur was going to have to face him.

Arthur would have given  _ anything  _ to fix it all, to make the entire mess go away, but bargaining with the world never worked that way.

He didn’t know what to do.

He felt paralyzed.

…

His magic was pushing him.

Although Merlin would have liked to sleep a little longer, his magic was shoving him back into the land of the living. It wasn’t going to do anything more for him, he could tell, but he still felt reluctance that he couldn’t explain.

For a while, he lay there, attempting to hear everything around him.

Arthur had said everything was fine and was being taken care of.

Normally, Merlin would have been assured that there was nothing to worry about. Despite the rawness of his own skin and the pain, however, Merlin felt restless.

He tried to open his eyes, but nothing was working properly, as though everything were out of joint.

“Arthur?” he coughed.

Was it night? Maybe everyone was asleep.

“Merlin.”

Footsteps, and then Merlin realized it was Elyan hovering over him, uncertain as to what to do with Merlin now that he was awake.

He settled on, “Does anything hurt?”

Merlin could have laughed. “Everything. Is it night?”

“No.”

Footsteps, somewhere behind Merlin’s head. Or off to the side. The world seemed a little off-kilter.

Elyan helped him sit up again, and then something hard was pressed into his hands. He found it was a water bottle. He drank a little, and when he came up for air, he found that it was the smallest bit easier for breathing.

“Can you take whatever’s on my head off?” he asked.

“Er…” Elyan’s voice was hesitant.

“Do we need to move? The village-”

He sucked in a breath. 

It felt as though something were squeezing him, keeping him from breathing. “What…” He swallowed. “What...happened?” he settled on.

“You don’t remember?” Elyan was surprised.

“I…”

He couldn’t say,  _ “If you could let me know if you saw me use magic, that would be great, thanks.”  _

They had found out.

They’d drugged and burned him.

Merlin didn’t want to burn again.

_ Fie,  _ he didn’t want to burn again. 

He couldn’t.

“Merlin, for the love of green grass,  _ breathe.”  _

That was Arthur’s voice.

The footsteps must have belonged to him. 

“What-”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Arthur told him, taking the water bottle out of his hands before his weak fingers could drop it. “Everything’s...everything’s  _ fine.”  _

He wielded the word  _ fine  _ as though it were poison.

“You-”

Had  _ Arthur  _ seen?

Merlin should have remembered, but everything was fire and smoke, a twisted world inside his head.

If he breathed in deeply enough, he could smell  _ it- _

“I…” Arthur cleared his throat. 

Merlin waited for him to go on, almost afraid to keep inhaling and exhaling.

“I don’t care.” Arthur’s voice was firm. A crunching sound indicated that he crouched next to Merlin.

They must have been in a forest or something, but Merlin couldn’t recall any forests.

“I don’t care,” Arthur repeated. “You’re not evil. I’m not going to...I’m not going to execute you.”

It was the moment that Merlin had dreamed of, thought of, feared his entire time in Camelot, and it was  _ okay.  _

Merlin could have cried with relief, but he was empty.

“Thank you, Arthur,” he whispered, almost light headed.

“You should rest more,” Arthur told him in a flat tone, obviously done with the topic of conversation (Merlin was fine with burying it). “We’re going to be moving again, later. You might actually be awake for that. Just…”

Merlin wasn’t sure if he was supposed to ask “what the damage was” or some other trivial thing like that. His skin felt raw. He was tired of the world being dark.

“Can you take the bandage off my head?” he asked. 

“The...bandage,” Arthur echoed.

Someone behind him shifted, but Merlin couldn’t tell what they were doing.

“Please. I want to see…”

His body felt weird. Although every little movement was electrifying, it was more than he remembered feeling at first, making him wonder how much his magic had done.

Arthur hadn’t said anything.

_ No one  _ had said anything.

It was almost as though they were walking on eggshells or broken glass.

His heart, which had been beating so fast, almost stilled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

Something was wrong. He was almost certain of that, but he could not place a finger on it yet when  _ everything  _ around him was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” he repeated with as much force as he could put into the words when no one answered.

“Merlin,” Arthur’s voice was filled with so many identifiable emotions, but anger and sorrow shone forth in his tone, “there aren’t any bandages.”

“There aren’t,” Merlin echoed flatly.

Maybe he should have realized that, but his whole body felt numb and hurt at the same time, as though it had fallen asleep and was trying to wake up even though it didn’t want to.

_ There aren’t any bandages. There aren’t any bandages. _

Merlin tried to work through this.

The answer was staring him, metaphorically, right in the face, but it  _ could not be that.  _ Everything in Merlin screamed at him to find the right solution.

He reached up to feel around his face, but a hand stopped him.

“Merlin-”

Because his grip was light, Merlin was able to shake him off easily and explore his face with his fingers.

It felt weird. 

He knew he was touching his face, but everything felt disconnected.

He didn’t dwell on it, moving his hands up to his eyes.

Or where his eyes  _ should  _ have been.

His face was a mess.

He didn’t know what he expected, but he didn’t end up poking his eyes like he thought he was because there was nothing there to  _ poke- _

He felt bile rising in his throat.

Oh, his magic very well might have been  _ healing  _ him, but it couldn’t fix what wasn’t there.

It wasn’t going to create  _ eyes  _ out of nothing even if he was supposedly the most powerful sorcerer to walk the earth.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said even though Merlin didn’t understand why  _ he  _ would be feeling guilt over it.

Merlin turned to the side and vomited.

“I think…” he started, but he didn’t have the words or the thoughts to finish that sentence.

He was blind.

He was blind, and even his magic couldn’t fix it.

He couldn’t even use his magic if he couldn’t see, let alone protect Arthur from everyone trying to kill him.

Fie, Merlin was sometimes barely even able to do that  _ with  _ his eyesight.

The pain, the fire, the stress of realizing his secret was out - none of it mattered because he couldn’t do it anymore.

_ His eyes were gone.  _

…

Arthur watched as realization dawned on Merlin’s face.

As contorted as it was from the work of the flames, Arthur saw pain and hurt and self-loathing all in one instant.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I can’t see,” Merlin dumbly repeated almost to himself.

Arthur didn’t want to hear Merlin say that.

“I can’t see.”

Merlin was trembling like a leaf shaking in a spring breeze.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur repeated.

As if that was going to do any good. As if that was going to make up for any of this.

Arthur never wanted anything like this to happen.

He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to  _ help  _ Merlin, but honestly, what was he going to do? He was Arthur Pendragon, born into a household in which the servants patched him up whenever he scraped his knee with hardly a world of comfort.

This wasn’t a skinned knee. This was  _ worse,  _ and Arthur couldn’t just punch Merlin on the shoulder and expect that to fix anything.

Fie,  _ this wasn’t something that could be fixed. _

Merlin jumped when Arthur touched him but otherwise didn’t move as Arthur hugged him.

“I’m sorry, Merlin. Goodness,  _ I’m so sorry.”  _

The words weren’t enough.

Nothing was enough.

Merlin was a sorcerer, Merlin was illegally practicing magic, Merlin almost died, Merlin was  _ blind- _

It was the first time Arthur Pendragon had cried in his life and the first time he had ever given his friend a hug.

It felt so wrong.


End file.
